My heart tells me that proper nouns do not receive a capital at the beginning of a sentence if they do not in the middle of one. Non-capitalized proper nouns are kind of an Internet-age thing - usernames and the ilk were the genesis - and the laws of grammar have been a moving target throughout history. Time to move the goalposts. One way or another.

My heart tells me that proper nouns do not receive a capital at the beginning of a sentence if they do not in the middle of one. Non-capitalized proper nouns are kind of an Internet-age thing - usernames and the ilk were the genesis - and the laws of grammar have been a moving target throughout history. Time to move the goalposts. One way or another.

This. Proper nouns are spelled the same regardless of where they occur in the sentence (which makes mentioning my darling husband's nick a PITA if I'm being pedantic). Regular nouns and pronouns change depending on where they are.That being said, now that i[something] is a well-known "thing", if you wanted to mock it with a generic iNoun, it should always get the lower case, just like the proper noun version.

If it is a product name, I always use the appropriate capitalization. Thus, eBay, iPad and such are fine both within a sentence as well as at the beginning. No additional capitalization is necessary (e.g. EBay, IPad, etc).

I got a PM from aengblom (non-subscriber) who says that the Associated Press Stylebook says to use IPad.

aengblom wrote:

I haven't been a subscriber for awhile, but the Associated Press style guide (the bible for copyeditors in the news industry) says:

iPad A touch-screen computer that is much like an iPod but is larger and can be connected to cellular data networks. Use IPad when the word starts a sentence or headline. (Source: AP Stylebook)

So now we know .

Meh, a style guide isn't an authority on usage unless you're writing for an organization that says it is. In any case, AP has a history of lagging behind newly common usage and then catching up eventually. I wouldn't be surprised if they did a 180 on this next year just like they did with "website".